Police Are Told That Missing Girl Was Slain

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Published: February 16, 1997

For 15 months, no one in the city's Child Welfare Administration or school system noticed the disappearance of 8-year-old Justina Morales of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a girl known to child welfare officials.

Now, Brooklyn detectives are investigating a report that she was murdered in November 1995 and her body disposed of in a trash can, while child welfare officials and school authorities try to determine how her absence escaped the notice of social workers, administrators and teachers for more than a year.

Detectives from the 72d Precinct were alerted to the girl's disappearance only last week, when a man walked into the station house and announced, ''I know about a little girl who was killed,'' according to an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity and would not give the man's name.

The man told the police that Justina had been murdered by her mother's boyfriend, and that her body had been dumped in the trash in November 1995, shortly after she was taken out of classes at Public School 1 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Her mother, Denise Solero, refused to be interviewed by detectives. The mother's lawyer, Michael Dowd, who is known for defending abused women, declined to discuss the case but said Ms. Solero had been in an abusive relationship.

''My client is a battered woman who was referred to me by an agency that renders aid to battered women,'' Mr. Dowd said. ''She came to me to see that justice is done. One of the things that is a concern to me is a fear for her physical safety.''

Residents on Halsey Street, where Ms. Solero lives, said she told them Justina had gone to live with her father in November 1995. But Inspector Michael Collins, a police spokesman, said there was no sign of the child at the home of the father, who lives out of town, and no indication that a body fitting her description has been left unclaimed at the city Medical Examiner's office.

Investigators say the boyfriend is a suspect in Justina's disappearance and the father is not. They did not release the name of either man.

As the police wait to interview Ms. Solero and search for the boyfriend, the Administration for Children's Services is investigating whether a breakdown in its procedures allowed her absence to go unnoticed.

Police investigators said the bureau of child welfare had an active case file on Justina before her disappearance.

Nicholas Scoppetta, Commissioner of Children's Services, said his agency had begun an inquiry. Board of Education investigators were also examining their records. School policy requires that whenever a student is discharged from one school, a special form -- called a 407 -- must be filled out and forwarded to the school to which the child is transferring, but it is unclear whether such a procedure was followed when, according to what Justina's mother apparently told neighbors, she was supposed to switch from P.S. 1 to P.S. 93 in November 1995.